September 23, 2005

Moving Millions

With highways outside Houston turned into parking lots I'm surprised no one has blamed President Bush. But in all seriousness about the only thing Texas officials could have done was to implement contraflow sooner, and that might not have done much good.

With Hurricane Rita losing steam a lot of evacuees will regret leaving town. Many of us have short-term memories. We best remember events that happened most recently. Millions fled from Rita because of the recent memory of Katrina's destruction (the most visible due to New Orleans' failed levees and not the storm itself). When the next hurricane heads toward the Texas coast many will wait longer to see if she loses power.

That's the price of giving people free choice. Even in a devestated New Orleans officals didn't go so far as to force people to leave, and that was only a few thousand stubborn people. There's no way to force evacuations of hundreds of thousands of people. Even with martial law and thousands of armed troops Americans would resist. Such blatant totalitarianism isn't in our cultural DNA.

"Best-Laid Plans Weren't Enough in Texas"

[As an aside, why did so many people take the same roads? From a brief look at a map I see lots of ways out of Houston. Not all of them are straight shots to San Antonio or Dallas, but I'm sure a 100-mile detour would be faster than sitting in miles and miles of traffic.]